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How We Refactor, and How We Know It. Emerson Murphy-Hill Portland State (now UBC) Chris Parnin Georgia Tech Andrew Black Portland State.
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How We Refactor, and How We Know It Emerson Murphy-Hill Portland State (now UBC) Chris Parnin Georgia Tech Andrew Black Portland State Thanks to Ki-Yung Ahn, Barry Anderson, Lee Beckman, Brett Cannon, Tim Chevalier, Sara Dadizadeh, Sam Davis, Danny Dig, Rafael Fernandez-Moctezuma, Markus Keller, RashawnKnapp, Andy Ko, Seonah Lee, Peng Li, Chuan-kaiLin, Ralph London, Gail Murphy, ImmadNaseer, FiniNitschke, Jinwgen Owen Ou, Sarah Rastakar, Claudia Rocha, Suresh Singh, PetcharatViriyakattiyaporn, and Bryant York for assistance, as well as the National Science Foundation for partially funding this research under CCF-0520346.
Introduction to Refactoring class Foo{ } class Bar{ } class Bar{ int a; public Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } } class Bar{ int a; private Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } public static Bar create(intanA){ return new Bar(anA); } }
Introduction to Refactoring class Foo{ } class Bar{ } class Bar{ int a; public Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } } class Bar{ int a; private Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } public static Bar create(intanA){ return new Bar(anA); } } Correctness & Speed
Introduction to Refactoring class Foo{ } class Bar{ } class Bar{ int a; public Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } } class Bar{ int a; private Bar(intanA){ this.a = anA; } public static Bar create(intanA){ return new Bar(anA); } } R R … Time
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 3 Research Questions Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? versus root-canal refactoring • Do Programmers Refactor Often? versus Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? versus
Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? If floss refactoring is more common, then tools should support that strategy Importance A tool user interface optimized for “root canals” A tool user interface optimized for “flossings”
Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? Floss refactoring better by prescription: In almost all cases, I'm opposed to setting aside time for refactoring. In my view refactoring is not an activity you set aside time to do. Refactoring is something you do all the time in little bursts. – Martin Fowler Avoid the temptation to stop work and refactor for several weeks… Have your team get used to refactoring as part of their daily work. – James Shore Case studies describe root canal refactorings: Pizka [2004] Bourqun and Keller [2007] What We Already Know
Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? What We Did and Results R R R R R R R R R 91% of refactorings occurred during floss refactoring R R Repeated Process For 17 Randomly Selected Commits To a Large Open-Source Project R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 65% of Commits were Floss Refactoring R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R Root Canal (Pure) Refactoring Floss (Mixed) Refactoring 1 6 0 11 1 0
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 3 Research Questions Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? Yes versus Do Programmers Refactor Often? versus Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? versus
Do Programmers Refactor Often? If programmers refactor often then refactoring research matters then refactoring tools may significantly speed up and improve the correctness of programming Importance
Do Programmers Refactor Often? What We Already Know According to Xing and Stroulia [2006]: Refactoring is frequent, in the Eclipse project But their use of an automated detection tool means the results are only a rough estimate
Do Programmers Refactor Often? What We Did + Results 4 Developers on the Same Open Source Project Feb.1 Dev. 1 Feb.1 Dev. 2 Feb.3 Dev. 4 Feb.4 Dev. 3 Feb. 8 Dev. 3 Feb.11 Dev. 4 R R R R R R … Refactoring Tool Logs in 2006/2007 Week 1 Week 2 2006 2007 But this is tool-based refactoring. If many refactorings are done without tools, then refactoring is even more frequent.
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 3 Research Questions Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? Yes Do Programmers Refactor Often? Yes versus Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? versus
Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? If programmers underuse refactoring tools: then there’s potential for tool improvements then programmers are needlessly introducing errors or refactoring slowly Importance
Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? From our previous work 2 in 16 programming students used them (and even then, 20% and 60% of the time) Agile developers (in 2007, n=112) estimate that they use them only 68% of the time 6 of 42 people who used Eclipse on networked PSU computers used refactoring tools What We Already Know
Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? What We Did Dev. 1 Commit Feb. 1, 15:01 Dev. 1 Commit Feb. 1, 15:23 R ? = Jan. 29, 08:40 Dev. 2 Feb. 1, 15:11 Dev. 1 Feb.1, 15:59 Dev. 1 Feb.1, 16:00 Dev. 2 Feb.1, 12:23 Dev. 1 R R R R R
Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? What We Did
Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? The Results R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 89% of refactorings were done without a tool R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R … among toolsmiths. R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R 3 Research Questions 3 Research Findings Do Programmers Usually Floss Refactor? Yes Do Programmers Refactor Often? Yes Do Programmers Use Refactoring Tools Often? No versus
6 More Findings The kind of refactoring performed with tools differs from the kind performed manually Toolsmiths use a wider array of refactoring tools than tool users About 40% of tool-initiated refactorings occur in batches About 90% of tool-initiated refactorings do not require configuration of the tool Messages written by programmers in version histories are unreliable indicators of refactoring About 40% of refactorings will not be detected by most mining tools that detect refactoring from version histories
Conclusion The more ways we look at how people refactor, the more confidence we have that we understand how people refactor In studying refactoring from new perspectives, our findings have confirmed – and refuted – previous knowledge about how people refactor